Low-Cost Micromechanically Tunable Optical Devices: Strained Resonator Engineering, Technological Implementation and Characterization

The rapid growth of the optical communication branches and the enormous demand for more bandwidth require novel networks such as dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM). These networks enable higher bitrate transmission using the existing optical fibers. Micromechanically tunable optical microcavity devices like VCSELs, Fabry-Pérot filters and photodetectors are core components of these novel DWDM systems. Several air-gap based tunable devices were successfully implemented in the last years. Even though these concepts are very promising, two main disadvantages are still remaining. On the one hand, the high fabrication and integration cost and on the other hand the undesired adverse buckling of the suspended membranes. This thesis addresses these two problems and consists of two main parts: • PECVD dielectric material investigation and stress control resulting in membranes shape engineering. • Implementation and characterization of novel tunable optical devices with tailored shapes of the suspended membranes. For this purposes, low-cost PECVD technology is investigated and developed in detail. The macro- and microstress of silicon nitride and silicon dioxide are controlled over a wide range. Furthermore, the effect of stress on the optical and mechanical properties of the suspended membranes and on the microcavities is evaluated. Various membrane shapes (concave, convex and planar) with several radii of curvature are fabricated. Using this resonator shape engineering, microcavity devices such as non tunable and tunable Fabry-Pérot filters, VCSELs and PIN photodetectors are succesfully implemented. The fabricated Fabry-Pérot filters cover a spectral range of over 200nm and show resonance linewidths down to 1.5nm. By varying the stress distribution across the vertical direction within a DBR, the shape and the radius of curvature of the top membrane are explicitely tailored. By adjusting the incoming light beam waist to the curvature, the fundamental resonant mode is supported and the higher order ones are suppressed. For instance, a tunable VCSEL with 26 nm tuning range, 400µW maximal output power, 47nm free spectral range and over 57dB side mode suppresion ratio (SMSR) is demonstrated. Other technologies, such as introducing light emitting organic materials in microcavities are also investigated.

User Profile Management and Selection in Context-Aware Service Platforms for Networks Beyond 3G

In recent years, progress in the area of mobile telecommunications has changed our way of life, in the private as well as the business domain. Mobile and wireless networks have ever increasing bit rates, mobile network operators provide more and more services, and at the same time costs for the usage of mobile services and bit rates are decreasing. However, mobile services today still lack functions that seamlessly integrate into users’ everyday life. That is, service attributes such as context-awareness and personalisation are often either proprietary, limited or not available at all. In order to overcome this deficiency, telecommunications companies are heavily engaged in the research and development of service platforms for networks beyond 3G for the provisioning of innovative mobile services. These service platforms are to support such service attributes. Service platforms are to provide basic service-independent functions such as billing, identity management, context management, user profile management, etc. Instead of developing own solutions, developers of end-user services such as innovative messaging services or location-based services can utilise the platform-side functions for their own purposes. In doing so, the platform-side support for such functions takes away complexity, development time and development costs from service developers. Context-awareness and personalisation are two of the most important aspects of service platforms in telecommunications environments. The combination of context-awareness and personalisation features can also be described as situation-dependent personalisation of services. The support for this feature requires several processing steps. The focus of this doctoral thesis is on the processing step, in which the user’s current context is matched against situation-dependent user preferences to find the matching user preferences for the current user’s situation. However, to achieve this, a user profile management system and corresponding functionality is required. These parts are also covered by this thesis. Altogether, this thesis provides the following contributions: The first part of the contribution is mainly architecture-oriented. First and foremost, we provide a user profile management system that addresses the specific requirements of service platforms in telecommunications environments. In particular, the user profile management system has to deal with situation-specific user preferences and with user information for various services. In order to structure the user information, we also propose a user profile structure and the corresponding user profile ontology as part of an ontology infrastructure in a service platform. The second part of the contribution is the selection mechanism for finding matching situation-dependent user preferences for the personalisation of services. This functionality is provided as a sub-module of the user profile management system. Contrary to existing solutions, our selection mechanism is based on ontology reasoning. This mechanism is evaluated in terms of runtime performance and in terms of supported functionality compared to other approaches. The results of the evaluation show the benefits and the drawbacks of ontology modelling and ontology reasoning in practical applications.

High-Speed Semiconductor Lasers based on Low-Dimensional Active Materials for Optical Telecommunication

The scope of this work is the fundamental growth, tailoring and characterization of self-organized indium arsenide quantum dots (QDs) and their exploitation as active region for diode lasers emitting in the 1.55 µm range. This wavelength regime is especially interesting for long-haul telecommunications as optical fibers made from silica glass have the lowest optical absorption. Molecular Beam Epitaxy is utilized as fabrication technique for the quantum dots and laser structures. The results presented in this thesis depict the first experimental work for which this reactor was used at the University of Kassel. Most research in the field of self-organized quantum dots has been conducted in the InAs/GaAs material system. It can be seen as the model system of self-organized quantum dots, but is not suitable for the targeted emission wavelength. Light emission from this system at 1.55 µm is hard to accomplish. To stay as close as possible to existing processing technology, the In(AlGa)As/InP (100) material system is deployed. Depending on the epitaxial growth technique and growth parameters this system has the drawback of producing a wide range of nano species besides quantum dots. Best known are the elongated quantum dashes (QDash). Such structures are preferentially formed, if InAs is deposited on InP. This is related to the low lattice-mismatch of 3.2 %, which is less than half of the value in the InAs/GaAs system. The task of creating round-shaped and uniform QDs is rendered more complex considering exchange effects of arsenic and phosphorus as well as anisotropic effects on the surface that do not need to be dealt with in the InAs/GaAs case. While QDash structures haven been studied fundamentally as well as in laser structures, they do not represent the theoretical ideal case of a zero-dimensional material. Creating round-shaped quantum dots on the InP(100) substrate remains a challenging task. Details of the self-organization process are still unknown and the formation of the QDs is not fully understood yet. In the course of the experimental work a novel growth concept was discovered and analyzed that eases the fabrication of QDs. It is based on different crystal growth and ad-atom diffusion processes under supply of different modifications of the arsenic atmosphere in the MBE reactor. The reactor is equipped with special valved cracking effusion cells for arsenic and phosphorus. It represents an all-solid source configuration that does not rely on toxic gas supply. The cracking effusion cell are able to create different species of arsenic and phosphorus. This constitutes the basis of the growth concept. With this method round-shaped QD ensembles with superior optical properties and record-low photoluminescence linewidth were achieved. By systematically varying the growth parameters and working out a detailed analysis of the experimental data a range of parameter values, for which the formation of QDs is favored, was found. A qualitative explanation of the formation characteristics based on the surface migration of In ad-atoms is developed. Such tailored QDs are finally implemented as active region in a self-designed diode laser structure. A basic characterization of the static and temperature-dependent properties was carried out. The QD lasers exceed a reference quantum well laser in terms of inversion conditions and temperature-dependent characteristics. Pulsed output powers of several hundred milli watt were measured at room temperature. In particular, the lasers feature a high modal gain that even allowed cw-emission at room temperature of a processed ridge wave guide device as short as 340 µm with output powers of 17 mW. Modulation experiments performed at the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion) showed a complex behavior of the QDs in the laser cavity. Despite the fact that the laser structure is not fully optimized for a high-speed device, data transmission capabilities of 15 Gb/s combined with low noise were achieved. To the best of the author`s knowledge, this renders the lasers the fastest QD devices operating at 1.55 µm. The thesis starts with an introductory chapter that pronounces the advantages of optical fiber communication in general. Chapter 2 will introduce the fundamental knowledge that is necessary to understand the importance of the active region`s dimensions for the performance of a diode laser. The novel growth concept and its experimental analysis are presented in chapter 3. Chapter 4 finally contains the work on diode lasers.

Development of thermo-analytical prediction and classification models for food in thermal devices using a multi sensor system and artificial neural networks

Die thermische Verarbeitung von Lebensmitteln beeinflusst deren Qualität und ernährungsphysiologischen Eigenschaften. Im Haushalt ist die Überwachung der Temperatur innerhalb des Lebensmittels sehr schwierig. Zudem ist das Wissen über optimale Temperatur- und Zeitparameter für die verschiedenen Speisen oft unzureichend. Die optimale Steuerung der thermischen Zubereitung ist maßgeblich abhängig von der Art des Lebensmittels und der äußeren und inneren Temperatureinwirkung während des Garvorgangs. Das Ziel der Arbeiten war die Entwicklung eines automatischen Backofens, der in der Lage ist, die Art des Lebensmittels zu erkennen und die Temperatur im Inneren des Lebensmittels während des Backens zu errechnen. Die für die Temperaturberechnung benötigten Daten wurden mit mehreren Sensoren erfasst. Hierzu kam ein Infrarotthermometer, ein Infrarotabstandssensor, eine Kamera, ein Temperatursensor und ein Lambdasonde innerhalb des Ofens zum Einsatz. Ferner wurden eine Wägezelle, ein Strom- sowie Spannungs-Sensor und ein Temperatursensor außerhalb des Ofens genutzt. Die während der Aufheizphase aufgenommen Datensätze ermöglichten das Training mehrerer künstlicher neuronaler Netze, die die verschiedenen Lebensmittel in die entsprechenden Kategorien einordnen konnten, um so das optimale Backprogram auszuwählen. Zur Abschätzung der thermische Diffusivität der Nahrung, die von der Zusammensetzung (Kohlenhydrate, Fett, Protein, Wasser) abhängt, wurden mehrere künstliche neuronale Netze trainiert. Mit Ausnahme des Fettanteils der Lebensmittel konnten alle Komponenten durch verschiedene KNNs mit einem Maximum von 8 versteckten Neuronen ausreichend genau abgeschätzt werden um auf deren Grundlage die Temperatur im inneren des Lebensmittels zu berechnen. Die durchgeführte Arbeit zeigt, dass mit Hilfe verschiedenster Sensoren zur direkten beziehungsweise indirekten Messung der äußeren Eigenschaften der Lebensmittel sowie KNNs für die Kategorisierung und Abschätzung der Lebensmittelzusammensetzung die automatische Erkennung und Berechnung der inneren Temperatur von verschiedensten Lebensmitteln möglich ist.

Semi-algebraic methods for symbolic analysis of complex reaction networks

The identification of chemical mechanism that can exhibit oscillatory phenomena in reaction networks are currently of intense interest. In particular, the parametric question of the existence of Hopf bifurcations has gained increasing popularity due to its relation to the oscillatory behavior around the fixed points. However, the detection of oscillations in high-dimensional systems and systems with constraints by the available symbolic methods has proven to be difficult. The development of new efficient methods are therefore required to tackle the complexity caused by the high-dimensionality and non-linearity of these systems. In this thesis, we mainly present efficient algorithmic methods to detect Hopf bifurcation fixed points in (bio)-chemical reaction networks with symbolic rate constants, thereby yielding information about their oscillatory behavior of the networks. The methods use the representations of the systems on convex coordinates that arise from stoichiometric network analysis. One of the methods called HoCoQ reduces the problem of determining the existence of Hopf bifurcation fixed points to a first-order formula over the ordered field of the reals that can then be solved using computational-logic packages. The second method called HoCaT uses ideas from tropical geometry to formulate a more efficient method that is incomplete in theory but worked very well for the attempted high-dimensional models involving more than 20 chemical species. The instability of reaction networks may lead to the oscillatory behaviour. Therefore, we investigate some criterions for their stability using convex coordinates and quantifier elimination techniques. We also study Muldowney's extension of the classical Bendixson-Dulac criterion for excluding periodic orbits to higher dimensions for polynomial vector fields and we discuss the use of simple conservation constraints and the use of parametric constraints for describing simple convex polytopes on which periodic orbits can be excluded by Muldowney's criteria. All developed algorithms have been integrated into a common software framework called PoCaB (platform to explore bio- chemical reaction networks by algebraic methods) allowing for automated computation workflows from the problem descriptions. PoCaB also contains a database for the algebraic entities computed from the models of chemical reaction networks.